Today’s post by Joe Farace
Plenty of bad movies are very successful, and plenty of good movies are not. And distribution is so crazy, some films won’t even get their day in court.—Willem Dafoe
The expression ” two-hanky movie” refers to a film that is particularly emotional or tear-jerking. The term suggests the story is so moving it might require two handkerchiefs to wipe away the tears it provokes. It’s often used to describe melodramatic narratives that evoke strong feelings of sadness or empathy.—from the Internet
Lately My wife has been working many evenings and that means I get to watch movies while she’s at work. When she gets home from work, this is how the conversation goes; Let’s take last night for example: We usually have a cup of tea together although it was cold last night so she made me a cup of Hot Chocolate. After a brief discussion of all the funny and not-so-funny things that happened at her job, she usually asks, “did you watch a movie?” and then “what was it?” So I answer, yes, it was Brotherhood of the Wolf. She and I had watched this film in 2001 when it came out on home video but she seldom remembers movies and the truth is she may have slept through most if it. So I tell her, “it’s like a western directed by Quentin Tarantino with a dash of Hammer Horror and Barry Lyndon. It’s set In 18th-century France and is in French with English subtitles.” “Hmmmmmm” she says…
The Tomato rating for this movie is 73/78. For my photographer readers who read some of my regular blog posts, I think Rotten Tomatoes’ scores for movies are a lot like DxO ratings for camera lenses. Maybe they’re correct and maybe they’re not. All of which brings me to the movie I watched the day before that didn’t even engender that long of a discussion between Mary and I: Frank Darabont’s underrated masterpiece The Majestic that also happened to have been released in 2001
And far from being a “two hanky” film, The Majestic was a ten Kleenex movie for me. What can I say…
There’s no getting around the fact that The Majestic is Frank Darabont’s unabashed homage to the films of Frank Capra. Capraesque is a term used to describe the style of American filmmaker Frank Capra (1897-1991). It refers to the theme of the triumph of the average person, as well as the sentimentalism and patriotism found in Capra’s films.
In The Majestic, Jim Carrey give the performance of a lifetime and I will fight the fans of The Truman Show about this, although I also happen to like that film as well as not liking most of Carrey’s other movies. I am not a fanboy of Carrey and dislike his on-screen forced goofball persona and have no doubt Darabont had to sit on him to get his subtle performance for The Majestic but Carrey delivers and it’s wonderful to watch him in this movie.
Much like Darabont’s Shawshank Redemption, The Majestic was a failure at the box office, earning $37,317,558 against a $72 million production cost. Unlike Shawshank Redemption it was not resuscitated by home video and it remains as what I think of as a forgotten classic.
The movie tell the story of a screenwriter in 1951 who is accused of being a communist and is about to be blacklisted by the witch hunters in the US Congress. He’s despondent and one night drinks a little too much and has a traffic accident plunging into river where he takes a hard knock to the head and later wakes up on a beach not knowing who he is. He’s awakened by the legendary James Whitmore who is among a cast of character actors that rivals Capra’s own stock company that I am sure is intentional. It turns out, Carrey resembles a War hero who has been missing for nine years and is quickly embraced by the nearby small town as the missing man. These people includes Martin Landau who portrays the missing man’s father and the war hero’s girlfriend played by Laurie Holden.
The entire cast is magnificent in their portrayals including David Ogden Stiers as the girlfriends’ father and town doctor who advises Carrey’s character that sooner or latter he’ll get his memory back. In the meantime, he’s like Robert Conway in Capra’s Lost Horizon and has found true love and peace in his own Shangi-La. But…. when he gets his memory back, it brings him face-to -face with a HUAC hearing that’s straight out of Capra’s Mr. Smith Goes to Washington with one big difference. At the end of Mr. Smith, James Stewart is exhausted and physically damaged by his filibuster. In fact, he looks dead and only an off-screen remark that’s “he’s OK, he’ll live” gives any indication that Stewart is alive, when, in fact, he looks dead. Fade to black. Instead Darabont gives us a nuanced and heroic performance by Carrey at the hearing. Where sometimes Capra misses the boat in his films, Darabont does not. You can get my take on It’s a Wonderful Life on my YouTube video about My Five Favorite Christmas Movies.
The Rotten Tomatoes rating for The Majestic is PG (not even PG-13) and well below the violence of the R-rated Brotherhood of the Wolf. And far from being a “two hanky” film, The Majestic was a ten Kleenex movie for me. What can I say? I get emotional when watching movies that I love and I think you will love this film too.